My review of this wonderful memoir by Tamara Shopsin (for foodies, of the famous Shopsin restaurant clan) ran two weeks ago (March 19) in Shelf Awareness for Readers (about two-thirds of the way down; the first review under “Memoir”).

I enjoyed it very much:  it is a terrific and engaging memoir full of love, life, humor and worry — a love letter to a city and a family, by a young woman living in Brooklyn whose abundant creativity (she is an illustrator whose witty drawings appear in national venues like the New York Times Book Review) is put to good use writing this memoir of her travels in India with Jason, her husband, and what happens when they return to New York.  She has a storied New York City family history that makes transplants like me look electroplated even after twenty years, while winning the hip urban creativity contest hands down.  She’s so disarming and unpretentious on the page that it is impossible not to love her, and her book.

And she achieves a wonderful writerly balancing act:  in-the-moment immediacy and urgency combined with the control to lead you through the narrative and wanting more.

I’d like some Shopsin eggs now.  Pancakes would be fine, too.